Snapshot News – Flying and reworked boats are here!

Yesterday, the big news broke about Minecraft’s shiny new feature – flying. Today, the latest 15w41b snapshot allows us to play it as well as check out the new boats, allowing us to get the full on all of it. Let’s take a look…

First we’re going to take a look at flying. If you’re not up-to-date, we already know that the wings work in a hang-glider fashion but now that we’ve had time to play it, the true potential of the feature comes out.

As you can see, the potential is there. The wings are officially called Elytra and can be obtained from an item frame in the floating End ships. They are equipped in the chest armor slot (nerfing them for combat purposes) and activate automatically once you fall for more than 3 blocks. They take durability damage when you use them, but they can be repaired with leather in the anvil.

Moving onto boats, they’ve received a full rework, adding versions of the boat for all wood types as well as completely changing how they work by adding paddles. They should act less clunky now and this hopefully means they will be used more since previously they were too buggy and slow to be useful.

Boats are now controlled using the A and D keys by default, and not using the camera and W. Yes, that does mean you can finally look around without turning the boat! The keys correspond to each paddle so if you want to go right you have to paddle with A for the left paddle. Holding both keys will move you purely forward faster that before, topping out at the speed of sprinting.

That’s it for this snapshot, but stay tuned for even more Minecraft news, as well as our usual mod reviews and other cool stuff!

You can download the snapshot via the Minecraft launcher (just go to Edit Profile and enable developmental versions).

Like always, feel free to discuss the snapshot and voice any feedback you might have in the comment section below.